


Brand New World

by yourebrilliant



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Compliancy: DH EWE?, F/M, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-04 00:33:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourebrilliant/pseuds/yourebrilliant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the battle at Hogwarts, Draco and Hermione both have trouble sleeping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brand New World

I’m not sure how much sleep anyone got that night. I do know that when the early morning sun started to filter in through the main entrance, I wasn’t the only one who had yet to close their eyes.

I was just giving up on sleeping at all when I heard the muffled rustles of someone else doing the same. I looked over at the door of the Great Hall just in time to see a rumpled tangle of curls disappear out of sight. Sighing, I eased my hand out of my mother’s death grip and quietly made my own way out of the Hall.

One of the conclusions I’d come to during those endless, sleepless hours, was that I had some reparations to make. My time under effective house arrest with the Dark Lord had given me the chance to reflect on the attitudes gifted to me by my parents, and I had found for myself the failings in their beliefs.

She was sitting on the front steps, wearing Muggle clothes and staring unseeingly across the decimated grounds. Unsure how to start, I simply stood beside her and stared out over the grounds. In the pale light of early dawn, the trampled earth and stony mounds took on an ethereal glow and made me wonder if Hogwarts would have a few more ghosts haunting it in the future. A gentle breeze drifted by, bringing with it the acrid scent of wood smoke and the chill of early morning. Stone dust pricked at my eyes and, at my feet, Granger shivered with cold, her arm brushing my leg as she shuddered.

In the light of my revelations, I looked at her again, really looked at her, and saw just a girl. Not a repulsive freak of magical nature, not a lesser being, just a cold, scared, emotionally scarred, seventeen year old girl.

She looked up at me when I draped my robes over her shoulders, silently assessing me. For all her preoccupation with her own thoughts, I was fairly sure she had known I was there, so the surprise in her gaze must have been a response to my act of kindness. I said nothing, frozen, as I waited for her judgement. After a moment, she obviously found what she was looking for, since she nodded in silent thanks, drawing the cloak tighter around her small frame and shuffling over to make more room for me on the wide step. Taking the gesture for the invitation it was, I sat down next to her on the step.

I watched her for a moment, wanting to speak, to tell her I was wrong, and sorry, and determined not to make the same mistakes as my parents, but I couldn’t bear to interrupt the moment with home truths and the discussion of ugly deeds. There would, I knew, be plenty of that to come. Instead I stretched my legs out on the steps and leant back on my hands. After a moment, Hermione did the same, covering one of my hands with her own.

Time passed, unnoticed, as we sat there together, the Slytherin and the Gryffindor, the pureblood and the Muggle-born, watching in reverent silence as the sun rose on our first day in a brand new world.


End file.
